Blue Rose Meaning: Why It Stood for the Impossible, and What a Pansy Gene Changed in 2004

Blue rose meaning starts with a biological fact: roses cannot make delphinidin, the pigment behind most blue flowers, so a truly blue rose does not occur in nature. That gap is why the blue rose came to stand for mystery, the unattainable and the impossible. In 2004 the Japanese company Suntory introduced a pansy gene for blue pigment into a rose, and from 2009 the result, a rose called Applause, was sold as a cut flower in Japan. It opens lavender to violet-blue rather than royal blue, and its maker gave it a new meaning, “a dream-come-true.” This guide separates what the sources document from what is only custom, so you can see which blue rose meanings rest on a text, a paper or a press release. For the wider picture, see our complete guide to flower symbolism and our rose meaning by colour page.

What does a blue rose mean?

A blue rose means mystery and the unattainable. Popular Science says that in literature and folklore the blue rose “signifies the impossible, or mystery, or the unquenchable,” and ties that to a genetic barrier that makes a blue rose naturally impossible. Florist guides carry the idea into gifts. Odeala Rose lists mystery and the unattainable, deep admiration, and new beginnings and hope. FlowerGlossary says blue roses “often represent unattainableness” and that many people also link them to love at first sight or impossible love.

These are traditions, not facts about the flower. Each one grows from the same root: a rose that cannot be blue invites people to read meaning into the colour. Suntory later attached a different meaning to the rose it made. Florigene, Suntory’s flower business, says that “in the language of flowers, Blue Rose Applause translates to a dream-come-true.”

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The table sorts the readings by context and shows what each one rests on. The main takeaway: the older meanings come from the flower’s rarity, and the newest comes from a company’s naming of one cultivar.

Did Victorian flower dictionaries list a blue rose?

Neither of two Victorian flower dictionaries we searched contains the phrase “blue rose.” Kate Greenaway’s Language of Flowers has separate entries for many roses, among them Bridal, Cabbage, Damask, Deep Red and Musk. It has no blue one. The other book, The Language of Flowers, including Floral Poetry (Worthington, New York, 1884), returns no match for the phrase either.

What Greenaway does list in blue is revealing: blue periwinkle means “Early friendship,” blue violet “Faithfulness” and bluebell “Constancy.” So in this text the friendship meaning among blue flowers belongs to periwinkle, not to the rose.

The idea of a blue rose is older than the dictionaries, though. In The Rose: Its History, Poetry, Culture, and Classification (1847), Samuel Parsons quotes a Moorish treatise that says “if deep blue roses are wanted, falch, a brilliant indigo, should be used.” He also repeats a story that a citizen of Damascus watered a rose plant with dissolved indigo and got “a very agreeable deep blue,” then reports that another author, Haj, “thinks this story was made for amusement.” Parsons still thought the experiment “well worth the trial.” So the wish for a blue rose was recorded long before anyone identified the missing enzyme.

Why don’t blue roses exist in nature?

Roses lack the key enzyme for making the blue pigment. Katsumoto and colleagues (Plant and Cell Physiology, 2007) report that Rosa hybrida lacks violet-to-blue varieties because it has no delphinidin-based anthocyanins, and that roses lack flavonoid 3′,5′-hydroxylase (F3′5′H), the key enzyme for making delphinidin.

The mechanism is a chain of small steps. Flower colour is mainly determined by anthocyanins, and the more hydroxyl groups on the B-ring of the pigment, the bluer it is. Two enzymes, F3′H and F3′5′H, decide how many groups the pigment gets. A 2013 review by Tanaka and Brugliera in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B explains that garden roses get their red from cyanidin-based pigments, their orange from pelargonidin-based ones and their yellow from carotenoids, and that they do not make delphinidin.

Missing the enzyme is only half the problem. The same review says roses “hardly have intrinsic factors to generate blue flower colours” because they do not produce delphinidin or flavones (which act as co-pigments), rarely contain aromatically acylated anthocyanins and tend to have a lower vacuolar pH. So a rose needs more than one change to look blue. Katsumoto’s team describe the blue hues of their engineered roses as “not achieved by hybridization breeding.”

How did Suntory make the Applause rose?

Suntory made Applause by adding a pansy gene to roses so that the petals could finally make delphinidin. Popular Science reports that “in 2004, Suntory finally managed to introduce a gene for blue pigment from a pansy into a rose.” Florigene says Suntory “isolated and patented the ‘blue-gene’ in 1992.” An AFP report from October 2009 counts about 20 years of research, with success in 2004, and says sales would start the following month.

The path was not straight. The two papers describe three stages of trial and error:

• Wrong donors. A petunia F3′5′H gene gave no delphinidin in rose petals, and genes from salvia, lavender and bluebell creeper gave only 1 to 10 percent delphinidin with no evident colour change.
• The pansy gene. Pansy F3′5′H genes gave up to 60 percent delphinidin and a visible colour change. The 2007 paper reports up to 95 percent in some selected cultivars, using the viola gene, which the 2013 review calls pansy-derived.
• The right host. The team analysed hundreds of rose cultivars and picked ones with higher petal vacuolar pH, lower F3′H activity and more flavonols. About 20 of 40 selected cultivars transformed successfully, and some reached more than 90 percent delphinidin.

One construct went further. It combined the pansy gene with an iris DFR gene and switched off the rose’s own DFR gene. That produced petals with over 99 percent delphinidin, but the plants showed growth retardation “for unknown reasons” and the review says it was not commercialised. Applause is a different line: the review says the two lines with the biggest colour change were chosen for cut-flower sale, and one has been on sale in Japan since 2009 as Applause.

The price reflected the effort. The AFP report gives 2,000 to 3,000 yen a stem, about ten times a normal rose in Japan at the time. Tanaka and Brugliera put it near 3,000 yen, about 40 US dollars at their exchange rate of 75 yen to the dollar. By September 2011 Popular Science said the rose was available in North America at select florists. We found no source in these pages that reports sales anywhere else.

Is the Applause rose actually blue?

Applause is not royal blue. The sources describe Applause in three ways. Florigene calls it “violet-blue.” Popular Science calls it “probably best described as lavender.” The Tanaka and Brugliera review says the colour is “the bluest among available roses” but quotes Nature Biotechnology that it “still lack[s] the true Royal Blue touch.”

The review also explains why. Delphinidin 3,5-diglucoside alone in the rose vacuole does not give a blue colour. Stronger co-pigments and a higher vacuolar pH would shift the flower toward blue, and the authors say many genes would need optimising to get there. The Suntory scientist Yoshikazu Tanaka told Popular Science that “every flower has its own way to be blue” and called Applause “our first step.”

One popular guide, Gardenia.net, says Suntory inserted genes from delphinium flowers into roses. The 2007 paper and the 2013 review name a viola or pansy gene instead.

What do the blue roses in a florist shop come from?

Florists often sell white roses that have been dyed blue. FlowerGlossary says that “florists will dye white roses to give them a blue appearance.” The mechanism is the one the Royal Horticultural Society’s school lesson on water transport uses with carnations. You stand a cut white flower in a container of coloured water, and the white petals slowly change colour over 10 to 30 minutes, because xylem vessels carry water up the stem.

The idea is old. The indigo accounts in Parsons’s book depend on the dye reaching the roots and rising through the plant, though Parsons says only that the question was “whether… its properties remain sufficiently unchanged to affect the color of the leaf or flower.” The table sets the three kinds of blue rose side by side. The main takeaway: only one of them, Applause, changes what the petals can make.

What does Suntory say the Applause blue rose means?

Suntory’s Florigene says Applause means “a dream-come-true,” and the rose first went on sale in Japan. It also calls the rose “symbolic of applause-worthy accomplishments” that “encourages and celebrates the fulfilling of dreams.” Popular Science quotes Suntory’s reason for the name: it serves “as a symbol of congratulations for those whose dreams have come true, as well as of encouragement for those pursuing a dream.” The AFP report adds that the roses were recommended as a luxury gift for wedding anniversaries and birthdays.

The new meaning turns the old one around. The old blue rose stood for what could not be done. Applause stands for something that was done. None of the pages cited here traces “a dream-come-true” to an older Japanese flower tradition, so treat it as the maker’s own message for one cultivar, which has been on sale since 2009. The sources do not date the message itself.

Where else does the blue rose appear?

In fiction the blue rose usually marks something strange or fragile. In Twin Peaks, “blue rose” is a phrase that Little White Lies traces to Fire Walk With Me. Gordon Cole asks Agent Chet Desmond to investigate the Teresa Banks murder, and when Sam Stanley asks about the blue rose, he is told “I can’t tell you about that.” The critic reads it as “very possibly a phrase used to decode the profoundly mysterious, the unsettling and the supernatural,” and notes that the blue rose on a dancer’s dress was added by Lynch during the shoot.

In Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln production note records that Laura’s nickname in the play is Blue Roses, and that Williams’s own sister was named Rose.

Tattoo guides repeat the mystery reading. Stylecraze says blue roses “showcase one’s individuality” and “symbolize mystery,” and The List notes that blue roses do not occur in nature but are “a popular tattoo choice.” Treat these as modern design commentary rather than an established tattoo tradition.

Can you grow a blue rose?

The sources we read describe Applause as a cut flower, and none offers a blue rose bush for the garden. What you can grow is a rose in any of the colours roses already make, and its care does not depend on the colour. Illinois Extension advises at least six hours of sun a day, a soil pH of 6.0 to 7.0, and well-drained soil, noting that “poorly drained soils and ‘wet feet’ spell death for roses.” Our rose care guide covers the rest, from pruning to feeding to disease.

Two products help any rose: a sharp pair of bypass pruners such as the Felco F-2, and a rose fertiliser such as Espoma Rose-tone. Both are affiliate links: if you buy through them we earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.

If you want real blue in the garden, plants that make delphinidin on their own do it far more easily than a rose. Our list of true blue flowers sorts the genuinely blue from the purple, and our forget-me-not meaning page covers a flower that is blue and has long-running symbolism of its own.

Frequently asked questions

What does a blue rose mean?

A blue rose means mystery and the unattainable. Folklore and literature use it for the impossible, florist guides add admiration and impossible love, and Suntory’s Florigene reads its Applause rose as “a dream-come-true.”

Is there a real blue rose?

No rose in the sources we read has reached true royal blue. Suntory’s Applause carries a pansy gene that lets the petals make delphinidin, but sources describe its colour as violet-blue to lavender, and a 2013 review, quoting a 2009 Nature Biotechnology news item, says it still lacks the true royal blue touch, though it calls Applause the bluest among available roses.

Are blue roses dyed or natural?

FlowerGlossary says florists will dye white roses to give them a blue appearance. Applause, the rose with a pansy gene for blue pigment, is a genetically engineered cultivar sold as a cut flower in Japan from 2009.

When was the blue rose invented?

Suntory introduced a pansy gene for blue pigment into a rose in 2004. The resulting rose, Applause, was due to go on sale in Japan in November 2009, according to an AFP report from that October, and the 2013 review says it has been commercialised there since 2009. Popular Science reported it at North American florists by September 2011.

What does a blue rose mean in love?

Florist guides say a blue rose means impossible love, love at first sight or deep admiration. We found no entry for a blue rose in two Victorian flower dictionaries, so this reading is modern florist-guide custom rather than a documented Victorian meaning.

Why can’t roses be blue naturally?

Roses lack the enzyme F3′5′H (Katsumoto and colleagues, 2007), so they cannot make delphinidin, the pigment behind most blue flowers. The 2013 review adds that they lack flavone co-pigments, rarely contain acylated anthocyanins and tend to have a lower vacuolar pH, so they “hardly have intrinsic factors to generate blue flower colours.”

Sources

1. Tanaka, Y. and Brugliera, F. Flower colour and cytochromes P450. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 368(1612), 2013 (linked in text)
2. Katsumoto, Y. et al. Engineering of the rose flavonoid biosynthetic pathway successfully generated blue-hued flowers accumulating delphinidin. Plant and Cell Physiology, 48(11), 1589-1600, 2007. DOI 10.1093/pcp/pcm131 (linked in text)
3. Florigene (Suntory Flowers). Suntory Blue Rose Applause (linked in text)
4. Nosowitz, D. Suntory Creates Mythical Blue (Or, Um, Lavender-ish) Rose. Popular Science, 15 September 2011 (linked in text)
5. AFP. Blue roses to debut in Japan. Phys.org, 20 October 2009 (linked in text)
6. Greenaway, K. Language of Flowers. Project Gutenberg eBook 31591 (linked in text)
7. The Language of Flowers, including Floral Poetry. R. Worthington, New York, 1884. Internet Archive full text (linked in text)
8. Parsons, S. B. The Rose: Its History, Poetry, Culture, and Classification, 1847, pp. 136-137. Internet Archive (linked in text)
9. Royal Horticultural Society. Water transportation in plants, school gardening lesson plan (linked in text)
10. Illinois Extension, University of Illinois. Roses: Preparation (linked in text)
11. Conterio, M. Twin Peaks season 3 decoder: Blue rose. Little White Lies (linked in text)
12. University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Nebraska Repertory Theatre presents The Glass Menagerie (linked in text)
13. Odeala Rose. Blue Roses Meaning (linked in text)
14. FlowerGlossary. Blue Roses: Meaning and Pictures (linked in text)
15. Gardenia.net. Blue Roses: How Science and Art Brought Them to Life (linked in text)
16. Stylecraze. 50 Beautiful Blue Rose Tattoo Ideas With Their Meanings (linked in text)
17. The List. The Real Meaning Of A Blue Rose Tattoo, 15 June 2022 (linked in text)